Monstrosity
by SecondStarToTheRight18
Summary: "Like some kind of madness was taking control." Oneshot. A twist on reality... maybe. but this is Supernatural, so who the heck really knows, right? ha! 'Tis a bit short, but please enjoy!


Takes place during season nine simply for age purposes, but there are no real spoilers for anything except season one, which I assume you've seen if you're reading fan-fiction. haha Also, here is a definition because it helps to understand the title once you've finished the fic.

mon-stros-i-ty;  
_noun_  
the state or character of being monstrous

mon-strous  
_adjective  
_deviating grotesquely from the natural or normal form or type.

* * *

**Monstrosity**

_I can't get these memories out of my mind,  
And some kind of madness has started to evolve.  
And I tried so hard to let you go,  
But some kind of madness is swallowing me whole._

- Muse "Madness"

XXXXX

_Lawrence, Kansas, 1983_

Dean Winchester sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. Sammy was crying. Yawning, Dean waited to see if his mother was going to console Sammy. After a minute, Sammy was quiet. Dean lay back down and closed his eyes, but seconds later threw them open again and jumped from his bed. His mother was screaming. He hurried toward Sammy's room only to run into his father in the hall. His daddy pushed Sam into his arms, saying urgently, "Take your brother outside as fast as you can and don't look back!" Dean hesitated, prompting John to almost yell, "Now, Dean, go!" Dean ran.

XXXXX

_30 Years Later, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania_

"I'm telling you Sam, this whole thing is getting weird." Dean said, angrily tossing a newspaper down on the table he sat at. He picked up his glass—whiskey because, damn it, this case was getting on his nerves—and tossed back a shot. "It's as if these people just disappeared into thin air. Literally."

Sam looked across the cheap, trashy motel room at his brother. He suppressed a smile and gave a snort. "And that's weird for us how?"

"Come on, Sam, we've been on this case almost two friggin' months and _nothing_!" Dean raged, pouring himself another shot of whiskey. "You can't argue this one is getting a little strange."

As much as Sam hated to admit defeat on a case, he was starting to share Dean's sentiment. Two weeks and no sign of the missing women, no hint, no clue. In fact, the only people in the town who had been any help to the Winchesters were the missing women's relatives. Nobody else seemed to know they had existed in the first place, much less that they were missing. Or that they'd all gone missing under a full moon. From the same parking lot. Within minutes of each other. Ten women, all of them at a crappy joint called _Jerry's_, all of them vanished between dusk and dawn in the same night. Not really a werewolf scenario, but what the hell else would do that? Of course, they had checked for all the usual signs of werewolves, but nothing had turned up evidence of them.

"I don't know, man, maybe this is just some crazy, inbred-freaks' kidnapping scheme." Sam sighed and shut his laptop. He lay back on the bed he'd been sitting on and stared up at the ceiling.

"What like those crazy bastards in Minnesota?" Dean rolled his eyes. "I don't get people."

"Yeah, like them."

Dean shook his head and said again. "I don't get people, man."

Sam nodded.

"Hey, Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"You know why you aren't getting anywhere on this case?" Sam asked.

"Why?"

"Because it isn't real." Sam said matter-of-factly. He sat back up and met Dean's eyes. "It's not real. Just like I'm not real. Just like all of this—Sam motioned to nothing in particular yet everything all at once—isn't real."

Dean looked suspiciously at his brother. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about, Dean." Sam stared at him. "You can't come up with any new ideas for cases and so you're just grasping at straws and coming up empty. You have to face reality now."

"No." Some part of Dean replied in a defensive tone. Why had he done that? Dean glared at Sam. What was wrong with him?

"Dean, it's time."

"What are you talking about?" Dean demanded, rising to his feet.

Sam remained seated and looked up at Dean. "I'm. Not. Real." He spoke each word individually. "Don't you remember?"

Dean just stared at Sam.

"I'm dead, Dean."

Dean scoffed. "Sam, we've both died, but we both came back, so what are you talking about?"

Sam smiled, stood up and put a hand on Dean's shoulder. "No, Dean. No, you know that isn't possible. People can't die and come back."

"Sammy… are you feeling okay?"

Sam dropped his hand to his side and smirked. "Am I? Are you, Dean?"

"Of course."

"Then stop lying to yourself. You know people don't come back from the dead. Mom didn't, Dad didn't and I didn't. You were lucky not to die in the first place."

"Sam-"

"No, Dean! You're tired of this. Why don't you let it all go?"

"Sam, what the hell is going on?" Dean felt something akin to earthquake tremors and suddenly the hotel room wasn't a hotel room at all. Both boys were standing on the front lawn of the house in Lawrence where their mother had burned to death on the ceiling of Sam's nursery.

"Remember this place, Dean?"

"Of course I do, man. What happened? How did we get here?" Dean looked frantically about him. "Cas, are you here? Did you do this? Cas!"

"Cas isn't here, Dean." Sam said flatly.

"Then how did we get here?"

"The same way we got to that hotel, Dean. In your head. You can create any scenario in your head."

Dean stared at Sam like he had grown an extra head or two.

"Mom left the stove on, Dean."

Dean looked sharply toward the house as if Sam meant that right at that moment their mother was in the house and had left the stove on.

"When we were kids, Dean. She left the stove on and the kitchen caught fire. Then the living room and stairway. By them time anyone woke up from it, most of the house was on fire. Mother tried to get us out but it was too late. After getting me, she couldn't cross the hall to your room and so she wrapped me in her arms to protect me but it was no use."

"Shut up, Sam!" Dean yelled.

"Dad had gone for you first. He put you out the window onto the awning then went to get mother and me. They all burned to death here, Dean."

"Shut the hell up!"

"You were the only one to make it out. The firefighters rescued you from the roof and found three bodies. You made everything else up, Dean."

"Stop it! Stop it!" Dean lunged forward and tackled his brother but the earth change around them and instead of landing in the grass, the duo fell into a lake. Dean surfaced and looked around breathlessly. "Sammy!"

Standing on the shore was a kindly looking man. He looked at Dean with sad eyes. "Uncle Robert!" Dean was astonished. He hadn't seen this man since he was a kid.

"Dean… Sammy is with your parents, remember?"

Dean looked at Robert, puzzled by what he said, only to realize he wasn't looking at him. Robert's eyes were focused on something to Dean's right. He turned his head and faced himself almost 30 years younger. 7-year-old Dean was screaming Sam's name at the top of his lungs. He was searching for him, as though Sam were somewhere in the lake, drowning perhaps.

"No, he's here, Uncle Robert! He's here! I saw him, he talked to me!"

Robert smiled gently at young-Dean, "Come out of the water now, Dean. It's time to go inside."

"Sammy!" Young-Dean screeched. Robert came into the lake up to his knees and dragged young-Dean out of the lake. All the while he was screaming for Sam.

"Uncle Robert, he's here!"

Older-Dean stared at the pair as Robert dragged the boy into the house and shut the door. A startling memory flooded his brain… this memory. The summer he spent at his aunt and uncle's house on the lake. The first summer after the fire when he saw Sam for the first time since his death. Sam came to him, but not as a baby, as a boy almost Dean's own age. A ghost.

"Sam…" Dean whispered. The earth around him began to spin and suddenly Dean was standing outside of a large building surrounded by a 12-foot iron-grate fence. All of the building's windows were barred and a cold wind stirred the leaves of a nearby tree. Horrified by recognition, Dean turned to run but tripped instead. He landed at someone's feet and looked up to find Sam staring down at him. "Remember this place?" he asked.

Dean pulled himself up on his knees. "No." he said, defiantly.

"Why are you running then?"

"Because everything's gone nuts! I keep switching locations! Cas, where are you?" Dean looked to the sky as he spoke, knowing full-well that this was not Cas's doing but refusing to believe it.

"Don't lie to me, Dean. We both know you're running because you _do_ remember this place. This is the hospital where you spent the better part of your teenage years, isn't it?"

Dean breathed heavily and stood to his feet. He realized his hands were shaking and shoved them into his pockets to hide the fact from Sam. "What are you saying, Sam!? I was hunting with Dad as a teenager! We both were, you know that!"

"No, Dean!" Sam shouted, making Dean flinch. "You were here from age 10 to 17, Dean. After that they let you go back to Uncle Robert's because they said you were okay again, remember?"

Dean shuddered. "No."

"Only you weren't okay, were you, Dean?"

"Shut up, Sammy!" Dean begged.

"Look, Dean! Look behind you."

Dean turned cautiously and saw himself, aged 17, standing outside the gates of the asylum, a duffle bag at his feet. He waited as a car pulled up. Dean recognized the driver as his uncle Robert. "Sam!" Dean turned back to his brother. "What is going on? Get me out of here! Wake me up! I'm having a nightmare or something… drank too much, watched too much porn, I don't know. Something!"

"No, Dean. These are your _real_ memories. This was your real life; this was who you were." Sam's voice was haunting. "You spent five years in this hospital, always saying you saw me. Telling your doctors that I spoke to you, that I hadn't died in a fire as an infant. After the fifth year you realized you weren't ever getting out unless you pretended to believe I _had_ died."

"Sam!"

"So you agreed with the doctors when they told you that your family was dead. You stopped telling anyone that you saw me. You stopped telling them about your dreams of monsters and demons."

"No, Sam!"

"Yes, Dean! You pretended to be normal and they let you go home, but it wasn't enough."

"That isn't true!"

Sam didn't reply, only closed his eyes and suddenly the scenery surrounding the brothers was that of an abandoned building, an asylum from the 19th century, shadowed by nighttime.

Dean screamed. Not current-Dean, but another Dean. Current-Dean looked around for the source of the scream, but couldn't see anything. Then out of nowhere, his younger self appeared wielding a shotgun and shooting at the air. Younger-Dean fled from the building, stumbled and hit his head on a rock. He passed out from the blow and lay still.

"You were in the basement. You thought you were hunting a demon." Sam said. "The police found you like this with the gun and Robert sent you back to the hospital and because everyone felt that you were a danger to yourself.

Dean looked horrified. "Sam, no…"

"Yes, Dean. You shot at things that weren't there. You talked to people who weren't there. Dean, it wasn't real. None of it was real! You've got to stop living in this fantasy."

"Why would I create such a dark world, Sam? Why the hell would anyone make a fantasy out of death and monsters?" Dean shouted at his brother. Everything was out of control. They needed to get back to the motel room in Philly and find those missing women. Even if they were kidnapped by humans and not monsters, the women were still missing!

"Dean! Listen to me!" Sam pleaded, "Come back to the real world! Come back to reality! You can't keep living like this!"

"Shut up, Sam, shut up!" Dean swung a punch at Sam and his fist connected with the left side of his brother's jaw. Sam swayed to the right but held his balance. Dean glared at him. "Stop it! Stop saying all of this crap and take me back to the motel!"

Sam relented and suddenly the two of them were standing in the motel once more.

"I'm still dead, Dean. You're still alone, sitting in a padded cell talking to yourself." Sam said, almost laughing as he spoke.

Dean wanted to scream that he wasn't but something was eating away at him. Something was wrong, something was off. _Nothing_ seemed real now. "What about Bobby, Sam? What about Cas? I guess you're going to tell me they weren't real either!"

Sam was silent.

"Well?"

Sam gave a single nod.

"No." Dean said. "Go to sleep, Sammy. This is a weird dream." Dean walked over to one of the beds in the little room and sat down. Sam followed suit on the other bed. "Dean-"

"Don't say anything, Sam. Just go to sleep." Dean ordered. Again, he felt his hands shaking as he reached over to turn off the lamp. He looked up at Sam and nearly fell backward off the bed. Sam's face was mangled, the whole left side of his face scarred from burns. He was missing his right arm and the other side of his body was aflame.

"This is how I died, Dean." Sam laughed almost hysterically.

Dean choked back a cry of alarm. "Sammy!" he screamed. He wasn't sure if he was hoping Sam would wake him up or that he would just go back to looking normal if this _wasn't_ a dream.

"Sammy! No, no, no! Saaammmyyy!" Dean beat a pillow against the flames on Sam's body. Sam just laughed. "You can't save me, Dean. I'm dead. Only a shadow now."

"No! No, Sammy! NO!" Dean shut his eyes tight. This was a dream. He'd had weird dreams before. A nightmare brought on by too much stress from the current case. When he opened his eyes, everything would be normal. Cautiously, Dean reopened his eyes but strange shadows from the flames on Sam's body still danced on the walls. "Why won't you leave me alone!?" Dean shouted.

Sam scoffed. "You won't let me, Dean. Besides, you wouldn't save me, and now you _can't_ save me."

"Sammy…"

"I won't go away, Dean." Sam leaned close to Dean's face and whispered in his ear. "Not ever."

"Nooooo!" Dean leapt from the bed and reached the motel room's door in two strides. He flung the door open but found he wasn't facing the rainy night outside. Instead, Dean faced a seemingly endless hall with doors on both sides and a blinding light overhead. Dean screamed in terror and ran down the hall. He flung open door after door but each one only opened to a new set of halls and doors.

"It's this one." Dean heard Sam's voice further down the hall he was currently running through. Sam's appearance was even more grotesque in the blinding lights, but Dean tried to ignore it as he reached his brother's side and turned the knob of the door Sam pointed to. It wouldn't open. "It's locked!" Dean said in despair.

"I know." Sam's laugh was a horrible grating sound that hurt Dean's ears and made his head pound.

"Sammy, noooooo!" Dean fell to his knees, pounding hopelessly on the door.

"I'm not going to open it, Dean." Sam said in a ferocious whisper. "You're never getting out."

"Sammmyyy!"

The motel around the two of them creaked and shuddered then disappeared. Dean found himself in a small room with nothing but a cot in it. The walls were padded. Dean screamed. Sam sat on the cot calming, despite his burning body. "I told you." He said, quietly.

"No, no, no!" Dean stood up and banged on the door of the room. He started clawing into his arms, hoping the pain would awaken him form this nightmare. "SAM!" he screamed at a petite mousy-haired woman in a white coat who stood outside his room. The woman didn't acknowledge him and picked up a telephone.

"Doctor?" she spoke into a phone mounted on the wall outside of room #B-221 in Kansas City Psychiatric Hospital. "It's Dean Winchester. He's clawing at the walls and screaming again. He needs to be restrained and sedated. Okay, I'll wait for you." The woman—Nurse Lane, Dean's nurse of 20 years—hung up the phone and stepped over to the window of Dean's room. She sighed. For years they had hoped the kid would grow out of his state of mental instability, but he hadn't. Once, when he was a teenager and the woman had just been assigned to Dean, it had seemed that he had returned to normal. However, after only two months of being out of the hospital, Dean cracked. He went on "a ghost hunt to save Sam," as he told the doctors when he was returned to the ward. He had not come even close to being normal since then. He was hardly a child now, a man of almost 36, but his childhood fears and memories had not left him and it was beginning to look like they never would.

"I've always thought he was meant for something more." Doctor Hancock said, walking up beside Nurse Lane.

"I know what you mean." He's digging at his own skin now, we need to restrain him.

The doctor nodded. He motioned two orderlies to bring a gurney. "Ready to grab him?" The two men nodded.

"Be careful, you two, he's stronger than he looks, and dangerous when he's in this state." Nurse Lane added.

The Orderlies nodded and entered Dean's room. Dean screamed and lashed out at them, but they had the upper hand and dragged him out of the room and onto the gurney where he was restrained.

"Shh, Dean, it's going to be okay." Nurse Lane said soothingly as she prepared a needle. Dean's arms were bleeding from where he'd clawed at himself. Doctor Hancock shook his head sadly. As the two of them wheeled the gurney down the halls toward the infirmary, Dean's voice echoed off the walls with a haunting emptiness to it. "Sammmmmyy!"

Back in room #B-221, Sam's mangled face, missing limb and enflamed body morphed into a normal Sam, save for this Sam's darker-than-normal eyes… Lucifer chuckled to himself. Messing with Sam in Hell had been immensely fun, there was no denying it. But Dean! Messing with Dean was _impossibly_ more fun. How could he have missed out on this for so long? He should have done this years ago… He laughed aloud and flicked his hand, changing the scenery in Dean's head to that of a cemetery where Mary and John Winchester were buried, along with their infant son, Samuel. If he had a heart, he would even feel that he was taking things too far. Poor little Dean, all dejected and sad. And scared. Dean Winchester _scared_. Just imagine it! Lucifer cackled and slapped his knees. He regained his composer and appeared in the cemetery in Dean's head. Dean was staring down at the headstone Lucifer had placed there. Standing in front of him as demon-eyed-Sam, Lucifer spoke in a spine-chilling whisper, "I'm still here, Dean…" Dean screamed and Lucifer-Sam laughed and flicked his hand, removing all the scenery around them. Suddenly they were in a tiny cell, the walls of which were made from bone and thorns. It was immensely hot in this cell. Dean fell to his knees from exhaustion.

Lucifer morphed into himself and said cheerfully, "I've got other things to do right now, Dean, but we can play again some other time."

Dean looked up at him, his face filled with confusion, anguish and revulsion. "Sammy?" he whispered. Lucifer laughed aloud, delighted. "Oh, this has been a fun day!"

Lucifer left Dean in his cell and practically skipped down the hall and out of sight. Dean slumped to the ground, and rolled onto his back, staring up at a ceiling made of flame. He thought he heard Sam screaming in another cell. Of course, he didn't even know if Sam was a real person or not. Or if he had ever been. He didn't even know if _he_ was a real person, for that matter. He didn't know if any part of this was real or not. He didn't know if _anything_ was real. Maybe that wasn't Sam screaming. Maybe he was still in his room at the hospital. Maybe he was asleep in a motel. Maybe he'd just had some bad chicken. Maybe Lucifer and this cell were all in his head too. There was only one person in the universe who might be able to help him figure this out, but maybe he wasn't real. Or was he? Tears streaked down Dean's face and his whole body shook. In anguished desperation, he let out a scream, but the only reply was Lucifer laughing hysterically. Dean closed his eyes. "SAMMY!"

* * *

I apologize quite sincerely for the Sherlock Holmes nod in this. Haha I'm a big fan so I had to. Story inspired by a post on Tumblr (curse that damn place lol) pointing out that it was quite possible for the entirety of Supernatural to be taking place in Dean's head because he went mad after failing to be able to save Sam in the fire. I took it from there and ta-da, you have my first ever attempt at "horror." And I put it in quotes because, quite frankly, I don't think this is horrible enough to be considered true horror. But alas, it's what you get from me. Ha! I do hope you enjoyed it! Please leave me a review letting me know either which way, though, won't you?


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